Facebook’s “Home” stands out in tech action

Social networker gets attention following anticipated phone event

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Facebook Inc. took the tech sector spotlight Thursday as Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg used a company event to show off Facebook’s new efforts to make inroads in the mobile-phone market.

Facebook's HTC screen

Facebook
FB, -1.18%
shares rose 82 cents, or more than 3%, to close at $27.07 as Zuckerberg showed off Facebook Home, a new home screen for Google Inc.’s
GOOG, -0.73%
Android-based smartphones that includes a collection of apps, and features such as Cover Feed, which will stream updates and photos as part of the home screen.

Zuckerberg said the purpose of Facebook Home is to give Android users a “more social, connected device.”

The HTC First will be the first phone to come with the new Facebook apps and technologies, and will be available on April 12 from AT&T Inc.
T, -0.97%
for $99 with a two-year contract. Preorders can be made starting Thursday.

After wavering through most of the day, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP, -0.94%
rose 6 points to 3,224. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index
SOX, -1.17%
rose 1.3% and the Morgan Stanley High Tech 35 Index
MSH, -0.78%
eked out a small gain.

Microsoft Corp.
MSFT, -0.74%
came back from being in the red most of the day to rise 4 cents a share and close at $28.59. Before the market opened, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Kash Rangan cut his rating on Microsoft to neutral from buy, an cut his price target on the stock to $33 a share from $35. Rangan based his downgrade in large part on what he sees as a lack of momentum in Windows 8 operating system sales.

Apple Inc.
AAPL, -1.54%
was off by $4.27 a share, or almost 1%, to close at $427.72 even though Lazard Capital Markets analyst Edward Parker started coverage of the company with a buy rating and $540-a-share price target.

Parker had a different take on Apple, calling it a “storage company” by “delicately but deliberately incenting customers to purchase NAND flash memory at 80%-90% incremental margins.”

Parker went on to say that “Apple is not only levered to data creation, but instrumental in driving data creation in ways its competitors aren't. We believe this framework helps to suggest why Apple’s outsize profits are sustainable even as competitors continue to close the gap with respect to device capability and quality.”

Netflix Inc.
NFLX, -1.39%
shares fell almost 2%, to $166.69, after giving up almost 4% on Wednesday. The Blu-ray and DVD sets of the company’s original series, “House of Cards” are slated to go on sale June 11.

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